I am a huge fan of Masters of Orion and Civilization even Sins of a Solar empire. I even played the original Galactic Civilizations on OS2/Warp back in the day but I had lost touch with this game even if it was later available in Windows and on Steam. So when this game became available for early access, I jumped at the chance to play it. Now, completely a newbie I am truly enjoying this 4x game.

The most exciting thing about this game is the new chatgpt inspired AI that helps generate new custom races that you can play with or against. You can start out as the humans (Terans) and slowly go to conquer the galaxy and wni the game through several win-conditions: Prestige (which is like a total score), economic, conquest, research, alliances, ascension, end of turns.

According to the dev notes entry #9, the map has been reworked to allow for sectors of tiles within the galaxy and subspace streams to warp between them.

The idea of the game is you start out on your home world with a few ships, a probe, a colony ship and a fighter ship. You slowly expand and explore until you find some suitable areas to colonize until you meet your neighbors (friend or foe). Rinse and repeat until you win the game. Pretty standard formula for most of these types of games. Besides of where the game takes place (space, the mideval period of europe, earth) what makes them all different is the nuances of how you expand and succeed.

Galactic Civilizations 4 (Galciv4) toys with the idea of a completely randomly made universe that has a lot of surprises via anomolies which are discoverable objects that can give you resources, money, ship enhancements or unleash monsters, ships or pirates. These anomalies can be discovered by a flag ship and every civilization is supposed to get only one. This flag ship becomes more powerful as it discovers more and gains more experience.

A quest to finding the best ribs in Miami is no easy task. Many have their favorite restaurants and especially locals prefer some of the historically honored traditional establishments such as Shiver's or Shorty's.

A good rib is one that is tender, not dry and above all else, tasty. And with these come subjective interpretations, which is delicious to one person may simply be atrocious to another. Some are ok with parboiled ribs for tenderness while others demand that they be slow roasted or slowly smoked. There are varying styles of barbecue that differ from Texas to North Carolina as well as the regional accompanying sauces.

I went to four different barbecue places to try their selection, in search of the best ribs and I was surprised at the complexity of the task. Each place I went to held their own and have their own special merits and I could easily go to any of these places depending on what I am in the mood for on that particular day. I am in the fortunate, or if you look at my waistline, unfortunate position of liking everything, beef ribs, spare ribs, baby back ribs, so long as it tastes good and the meat is tender.

First on the list is Shiver's BBQ in Homestead. It is a landmark and has been around since the 1950s.

They have a large variety of offerings and when it comes to ribs they have the full gamut of pork spareribs, baby back ribs and beef ribs. You can get all three in the "rib trio" which is what I did:

Note, this is an older article. There is a comprehensive regularly update pate here: https://endlessvolo.com/blogs/alaines-osteria-in-palmetto-bay-total.html

Some places are memorable by lending themselves to haughty taughty pretenses with in your face food presentations. Others are memorable for their wild, exotic ingredients and others are memorable as the "cool, hip place for 20 somethings." Alaine's Osteria (https://www.yelp.com/biz/alaines-osteria-palmetto-bay) is none of these things, it is much better, a comfortable, wholesome, happy place where you can go to relax and enjoy good tasting comfort food.

The restaurant has a nice warm feel to it, dark wood and warm colors decorate the establishment a bar, mostly empty divides the restaurant from its more romantic, quieter dining area to the more social side where the bar is, where there are  several 1-2 person tables.

Kobe meatball in porcini broth, topped with melted mozzaralla

Short rib agnolotti in creamy porcini sauce -- a ravioli filled with shredded short rib and riccotta

I am a big fan of Bravo's Top Chef, so when there is a local restaurant by a top chef contestant in town, I try to go, whichever town I'm in. The Root and Bone in South Miami serves southern comfort food from a husband and wife team that were on in 2013. Known more for their evening meals, I wanted to sample the brunch menu and showed up shortly after opening at 10am on a Sunday. It was not busy for which I was thankful, only a few tables. I am a pretty standard breakfast eater, preferring the simple bacon, sunny side up eggs, sausage links and potatoes. Of course they did have the "American roots Breakfast" dish which would have all I wanted with the exception of scrambled eggs, but this was not a place to go for standard food and I wanted creativity.

I sat at the bar and had a course of the Drunken Deviled Eggs, and Smoky Bacon Board, which were both very tasty. Every morsel of these two dishes was delicious and they were well balanced with different flavors on the same plate.

The deviled eggs had surprising pink color to them due to the pickled beets giving it a slightly acidic flavor which brings out the dill that is important in the dressing. A not-too-crunchy chip was buried slightly below the top of the egg dressing giving it a nice texture. However, I truly enjoyed the smokey bacon board and felt by itself, it had a nice complemetnary set of flavors that lends itself to eating each piece of of food in succession to ready the palate for the next flavor, a very well thought out dish. The pieces of the bacon were very thick, probably double or triple the thickness of a thick center cut bacon from costco. The fresh/mixed pickles gave a nice sweet heat along with the marinated cheese to reset your palate for the next bite of the bacon. The fried pork skins was a nice touch as well giving a slightly crunchy, dry taste before the deep smoke of the bacon on the next bite. I thoroughly enjoyed this dish and felt it paired well with the drunken devilled eggs.

For the main course, I had the braised short rib meatloaf with eggs which was also absolutely delicious. I'm usually unimpressed with dishes that have short rib in them, generally because they tend to be underseasoned, but the veal demiglaze gave it a nice touch of flavor. The asparagus and eggs were a nice complementary flavor and nothing was overcooked.

I may be in the minority on this but I have enjoyed this season much more than Mandalorian which also ended this week. This could be the enjoyment of the nostalgia, or it could be the writing.

The final episode culminates in a battle with the arch enemy of the federation, the Borg. As a couple of my friends have lamented, Picard doesnt seem like the Picard of TNG (Star trek, the next generation), because of either his age or the show's writing. However at the beginning of the show he answers with an astounding "What began over 35 years ago, ends tonight!" The solution is to sever the connection from the borg collective to the rest of the fleet. The underlying conflict is if Jack Crusher dies as a result of this.

What Star Trek Picard brings us more than the old Star TreK: TNG is character development and the acting is more subtle, especially from Patrick Stewart but still powerful. The facial expressions from Jonathan Frakes (Will Riker) during this season would have been comical on his younger 30 year old self. The love between Deanna and Riker would have been too cheesy in the old, young versions. But with the older versions of Deanna and Riker, they appear as a quaint happy old couple, like your favorite set of grandparents.

Beverly Crusher is an ace gunman on a starship.